Patients are being put at risk

Concerns about the ability of the main hospital in Limerick serving the people of North Tipperary to cope with the volume of patients it is faced with treating has been endorsed by more than 70 doctors.

Persistent overcrowding and unsafe working conditions at University Hospital Limerick are putting patients at risk, according to a letter signed by the doctors at the hospital.

The letter highlights several “near misses” at the hospital’s acute medical unit where doctors say patients almost died due to understaffing and a lack of medical cover.

The contents of the letter, reported on in The Irish Times, says patients have to wait more than 10 hours for a bed in the unit “without any medical attention” while other “lost” patients are sometimes “missed” and are “left unseen by a doctor for a number of days”.

The doctors say they have documented the issues so they can be prevented from happening again. “We are the doctors on the ground apologising to patients when things go wrong and all we want for our patients is to be cared for in the best possible manner.”

Because of poor access to outpatient services, “many patients remain on a ward for days to weeks waiting for review by a sub-speciality”, according to the letter, sent to hospital management and Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly last June.

The 72 non-consultant hospital doctors, who have made a protected disclosure detailing their grievances, say previous warnings by staff have not been acted on. After a previous letter was written by medical registrars in 2021, the doctors claim, there was an “internal witch-hunt” to identify the authors.

The views of the doctors accord with that of the Health and Information Quality Authority, whose report in June found the “overcrowded and understaffed” emergency department at UHL posed a significant risk to the provision of safe care. Since then, HSE officials have been sent to the hospital to find ways of improving flow but ED overcrowding remains one of the worst in the State. Last Friday, there were 70 patients on trolleys in UHL, the highest figure of any hospital, including 25 on wards.

UHL said the primary concerns raised by the letter relate to patient pathways established in response to the pandemic. While necessary to manage patients and protect staff, they impeded the flow of patients and reduced GP access to medical assessment slots. Since last month, the streaming of patients in this way ceased, thereby addressing many of the concerns raised, a spokesman said.